Boston Modern Orchestra Project Releases New Album Featuring Orchestral Works by Harold Shapero

Harold Shapero: Orchestral Works
Composer: Harold Shapero (1920-2013)
Release Date: August 4, 2020
TRT: 83:30
Works: Sinfonia in C Minor (1948), Credo for Orchestra (1955), Partita in C for Piano and Small Orchestra (1960), On Green Mountain for Jazz Ensemble (1957), Serenade in D for String Orchestra (1945)
Performers: Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Vivian Choi (piano), led by Gil Rose (conductor)

Boston, MA (For Release 08.04.20) — Known as the nation’s foremost label launched by an orchestra and devoted exclusively to new music, Grammy Award-winning BMOP/sound today announced the release of Harold Shapero: Orchestral Works, led by conductor Gil Rose and performed by the intrepid Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and celebrated Australian pianist Vivian Choi. A central figure of the mid­century musical landscape, Harold Shapero (1920-2013) advanced a unique vision for American music that incorporated the neoclassicism of Stravinsky, the clean elegance of Copland, and the edginess of serialism, all with a highly personal stamp. Marking the 100th anniversary of Shapero’s birth, this portrait album of the composer’s orchestral music features five works that harmonize tradition and modernity in a distinct American neo-classical style.

A composer, pianist, Harvard alumnus, and long-time professor of music at Brandeis University, Shapero was the last representative of the golden age of American music at the time of his death in 2013. In the 1940s, he became associated with the American “Stravinsky school” of neo-classical composers that included lifelong friends and fellow Brandeis faculty members Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein and Irving Fine. Shapero’s friend Aaron Copland described him as “the most gifted and the most baffling composer of his generation,” citing his “phenomenal ear” and his “brilliant (but erratic) mind.”

According to Gil Rose, Artistic Director, Founder, and Conductor of BMOP, Shapero embraced an unambiguously neo-classical style throughout his career. “Shapero’s music was fresh and invigorating when he wrote it. Even 100 years after his birth, his music has not aged over time.”      

Shapero’s works are emotionally intense and expertly structured, hailed for their rhythmic vitality, elegance, and memorable thematic material. BMOP/sound’s latest album gathers a small but exquisitely crafted group of his works for orchestra. Two tracks demonstrate Shapero at his peak in the 1940s when he was most prolific, in his twenties, and writing music filled with youthful exuberance. The intricate Baroque suite Serenade in D for String Orchestra (1945) is the earliest and most substantive work on this release, and is considered one of Shapero’s finest gems. The Sinfonia in C Minor (1948), commissioned by the Travelers Insurance Company, is modeled after Haydn and Beethoven. Shapero was one of many composers throughout the mid-20^th century promoted by the Louisville Orchestra, who commissioned Credo for Orchestra. 

Premiered at the 1957 Brandeis Festival of the Arts, On Green Mountain fuses a Monteverdi chaconne with a jazz ensemble, an interpretation of Gunther Schuller’s “Third Stream” vision. The latest work on this disc, Partita in C for Piano and Small Orchestra (1960), features pianist Vivian Choi in a palindrome-filled exploration of classical forms. 

About BMOP/sound         
BMOP/sound, BMOP’s independent record label, was created in 2008 to provide a platform for BMOP’s extensive archive of music, as well as to provide widespread, top-quality, permanent access to both classics of the 20th century and the music of today’s most innovative composers.

BMOP/sound has garnered praise from the national and international press. It is the recipient of a 2020 Grammy Award for Tobias Picker: Fantastic Mr. Fox as well as eight Grammy Award nominations, and its releases have appeared on the year-end “Best of” lists of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Time Out New York, American Record Guide, DownBeat, WBUR, NewMusicBox, and others. Admired, praised, and sought after by artists, presenters, critics, and audiophiles, BMOP and BMOP/sound are uniquely positioned to redefine the new music concert and recording experience. Launched in 2019, BMOP's digital radio station, BMOP/radio, streams BMOP/sound's entire catalog and airs special programming. BMOPsound.org

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